It has long been realized that correct teeth brushing plays a great role in ensuring the health of the teeth and gums.
It is now generally recommended that brushing be performed with up and down strokes which ensures maximal penetration of the bristles between the teeth thereby ensuring efficient removal of plaque from the teeth's surface and food remains from in between teeth and from the function of the teeth and the gums, thereby minimizing dental diseases, e.g. tooth decay or gum inflammations.
However, this recommended practice is somewhat awkward and does not conform with a normal tendency to carry out brushing in a direction essentially parallel with that of a standard toothbrush's longitudinal axis, e.g. across the teeth's surface.
Heretofore various proposals have been made and in some cases put into practice for obtaining efficient and correct teeth brushing. Among these are a variety of brushes equipped with electric motors which give rise to reciprocal angular displacement of the entire head of a toothbrush with respect to its longitudinal axis. However, these are somewhat cumbersome devices and relatively expensive and have not been generally accepted by the public.
Various proposals for manually operated toothbrushes have also been made, among which is the disclosure of U.S. Pat. No. 4,269,038 (Bradley), according to which the head portion of a toothbrush incorporates two pairs of elongated bristle carrying pads with the pad of each pair positioned side-by-side and the pairs end-to-end. Each such pad is hinged to the head portion of the toothbrush with a hinge axis being angularly disposed with respect to the elongated axis of the brush. The hinge is made of a resilient material, permitting tilting of the bristle-holding pads along said angular disposed axis, whereby, an up-down stroking action is obtained in concert with a side-to-side stroke along the teeth.
French Patent No. 2,616,306 (Bois) discloses a toothbrush having at its head portion an S-shaped recess pivotally accommodating two crescent-shaped bristle-holding pads, adapted for angular reciprocation within said recess and in the plane of the brush's head, whereby, only a planar motion of the moving bristles is obtained.
However, a disadvantage of the hitherto proposed toothbrushes is that the moving bristle pads reciprocate in a direction which is not perpendicular with respect to the longitudinal axis of the brash, thus, the correct and recommended practice of teethbrushing is not obtained. Another disadvantage is that reciprocal movement of the reciprocating bristle pad is obtained only by linear reciprocation of the brush along its longitudinal axis, including its integral head portion, thus, although there is some lateral displacement of the bristles, however, it occurs along the route of linear reciprocation, i.e., it is not possible to perform actual up and down brushing of a specific group of teeth, as the entire brush must be continuously linearly reciprocated.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a new and improved toothbrush that significantly reduces the above-identified disadvantages.